


When Two People Walk Closely Together (What Unconscious Communication One Mind May have with Another)

by rosewiththorns



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Bonds, Detroit Red Wings, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kneeling, Kneeling Universe, Leadership, M/M, Memories, Telepathy, faith - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:50:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5166134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewiththorns/pseuds/rosewiththorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hank forgets that he is a good captain and needs Pavel to remind him. Written per reader request.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Two People Walk Closely Together (What Unconscious Communication One Mind May have with Another)

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: This story involves a telepathic bond. Single quotation marks denote words sent via this connection, while double quotation marks indicate ordinary dialogue.

“No one can tell when two people walk closely together what unconscious communication one mind may have with another.”—Robert Barr

When Two People Walk Closely Together (What Unconscious Communication One Mind May have with Another) 

Slumped into the Adirondack chair on his patio, Hank admitted defeat. He had come out here into one of the first spring days that truly promised another long Michigan winter was over hoping that the cloudless cerulean sky would brighten his mood and the light breeze scented with magnolia blossoms would clear his mind. Instead his bucolic surroundings only reminded him that spring brought with it the playoffs—in Detroit, they were supposed to be joined at the hip like Siamese twins—and that made him worry for what felt like the millionth time this week that this would be the season that snapped the playoff streak that sometimes seemed simultaneously a blessing and a curse. 

Being captain when the Wings finally missed was almost unfathomably horrible to imagine (though his creative mind kept trying to torture him with attempts to envision such a nightmarish scenario) and his most haunting question was whether as a captain he was doing a good enough job—producing on the the ice and leading off it—to avoid such an ignominious fate. 

His brain was jumbled as a wet-behind-the-ears rookie’s but his bones ached to the marrow as if bruised from every hit he had sustained throughout his whole hockey life. This was probably how it felt to realize that you had spent all your strength building a castle of sand on the beach and now the tide was coming in to sweep it all away without a trace. 

Massaging his throbbing temples, he decided that he needed to talk to the one person—who in many ways was the same person as him—who would comfort him or challenge him, whichever one he needed, because Hank was so directionless right now that he would probably look at a compass and conclude it was pointing south. 

With shaking fingers that made sending the message more complicated than calculus, Hank texted Pavel: I need to talk to you, Pav. Can you drop by now? 

Hank hoped that his cell phone would buzz with an incoming reply from Pavel, but instead he felt a nudge almost like a friend in school tapping him on the shoulder while the teacher wasn’t looking in the back of his mind, and his head was swamped with a picture of Pavel driving down the street to his house. A second later, Pavel’s voice, half-teasing and half-reassuring, echoed in his eardrums, ‘I’m on my way over now, Z. Be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” 

There was never a language barrier or grammar gaffes when they communicated like this, because they weren’t speaking in English, Russian, or Swedish but some purer tongue of unfiltered thoughts, emotions, images, and memories. When they talked like this, they were engaging in the direct mind-to-mind communication that spoken language was only a pale approximation of, able to understand and be understood perfectly. He was aware that many would regard this silent communication as the definition of weird, but it had never seemed anything but natural to him. After all, if identical twins could be telepathic, why not the Euro Twins? 

‘You didn’t tell me you were coming,’ Hank chided, shooting Pavel a vision of him in the Adirondack chair so that Pavel would know to find him in the backyard. 

‘You didn’t ask.’ Pavel was coming closer—Hank could sense it. 

‘But you were concealing yourself from me.’ Hank scowled, because the only reason that he wouldn’t have felt Pavel driving down the road to him earlier was if Pavel had switched off their connection, and that required quite an exhaustive effort, since unconscious communication rather than cloaking had been their default setting ever since they had met so many years ago. 

‘I wanted to surprise you.’ Pavel’s smirk was visible in Hank’s head, and he sensed more than saw Pavel round the corner of his house and step onto the stone patio. 

‘You shouldn’t mock me when I’m in torment,’ admonished Hank, as Pavel pulled a cushioned seat from around the glass table next to Hank and settled himself in it. 

‘Whatever you say, Captain.’ Pavel's hand flew to his forehead in an ironic salute that startled a chuckle out of Hank. ‘You’re the boss.’ 

Snatching a pillow from another chair around the table and tossing it on the stone before Pavel’s sandaled feet, Hank confessed as he sank to his knees, ‘I don’t want to be the boss. You should be captain. Look at how you’re outproducing me.’ 

‘Leadership isn’t measured in points.’ Pavel pressed his forehead against Hank’s, so there was no gap between them, and they were enveloped completely in one another, the outside world of birds chirping songs to attract mates and flowers emitting enticing aromas to tempt bees to spread their seed receding from their awareness. ‘It’s measured in heart and soul.’ 

‘You have heart and soul, too.’ Hank snorted at Pavel’s typical self-depreciation. ‘Don’t act as if you don’t. It’s not nice to fish for compliments, even if fishing is your favorite hobby.’ 

‘I don’t act or fish for compliments.’ Pavel sent a reproach through Hank’s brain. ‘I have heart and soul, but when I need more, I come to you, and when you need more, you come to me. We share our hearts and souls. You know this, and that I can’t take the burden of captaincy from you, but I can help you carry it when it gets heavy.’ 

‘I just wish we were playing on the same line.’ A wave of wistfulness streamed like a sigh from Hank’s head to Pavel’s. ‘It hurts to think of how many points we could put up if Babs would just let us play together.’ 

‘We aren’t allowed to play together although sometimes he’ll pretend that we are.’ Pavel’s thought was bitter as a lemon. ‘He believes our bond is weird and borderline unhealthy.’ 

At first—Hank could feel himself recalling this along with Pavel—Mike had admired how they were always in sync with one another on the ice, remarking that it was almost as if they used lasers in their heads to detect where each other were as they played. It was difficult to pinpoint when those compliments or jokes—whichever they were intended to be—-ended and the suspicious glares when they appeared to know what one another were thinking not only without words but also before any nods or winks could be exchanged had begun, but when Mike had started to speculate that the lasers in their heads were real and powerful, they had been shunted to separate lines. He didn’t know that they were telepaths whose abilities were limited to reading each other’s minds, but he suspected that they weren’t normal, and that scared him because nothing terrified Mike Babcock more than inexplicable phenomena…

‘He thinks we’re nuts.’ Hank’s jaw clenched. ‘If anyone’s crazy, though, it’s him. He doesn’t believe in what he calls supernatural shit like telepathy, but he’s managed to creep himself out with the conviction that we can read one anther’s minds. It will just be a fucking shame if we miss the playoffs because he thinks we’re psychos who shouldn’t play together.’ 

‘We won’t miss the playoffs.’ Pavel squeezed Hank’s shoulders. 

‘But what if we do?’ Hank felt as though he were drowning and dragging Pavel into the dark depths with him. 

‘It would be like watching Rome burn.’ Pavel’s thought was gray as a thundercloud. ‘There would be very little solace in the knowledge that we fought as hard as we could at the gates to prevent the barbarian hordes from overtaking the city.’ 

‘And even if we make the playoffs, we won’t be permitted to play together for more than scattered shifts.’ Hank tore at a fraying strand on the pillow’s upholstery. “Not after how the series against Anaheim ended.’ 

Then he wasn’t sure which one of them was falling into the flashback to two years ago and tugging the other with him, but Hank could hear as clearly as if it were happening in the present an incensed Mike seething at them in his office, “What the hell were you two doing? If I put you on the ice at the end of a game, I need you to play hard, not flop around like a pair of idiots who never slipped into a damn set of skates before!” 

“We didn’t fall on purpose, and we got off our asses as soon as we could,” retorted Hank, expressing not only his own rage but the irritation he could feel boiling in Pavel. 

“Don’t bullshit me.” Mike’s eyes burned like the hottest part of a flame. “Both of you fell at the same time, rolled over at the same time, and picked yourselves up at the same time. That’s as staged as a fucking sitcom. Stick to hockey until synchronized falling is a sport you can win Olympic gold in, damn it.” 

“For Sweden or for Russia?” Pavel’s eyes widened innocently, but Hank was positive that it didn’t require a telepathic connection to sense that he was playing dumb. 

Apparently, Mike thought so too, because he snarled, “Stop playing possum. You know why I’m pissed off.” 

And they had: Mike wasn’t enraged at them for falling; he was infuriated that they had been captured on national broadcast performing an action more eerily identical than when the Sedin twins sipped water at the exact same second for the exact same duration. 

‘Remember how perfect everything was when Brett was our line mate?’ Pavel asked, and then, before Hank could think anything in response, Pavel was taking him along on another trip down Memory Lane, this time to a happier destination. 

It was Hank’s rookie year, and the three members of the second incarnation of the Two Kids and a Goat line were curled in a sofa after a draining practice. The Goat was in the middle, and he had an arm wrapped about each kid, pulling them against his chest and so close to one another that their foreheads touched. As sweaty skin met sweaty skin, Hank and Pavel tried to inject energy and comfort not only into each other but into Brett. 

Maybe Brett could feel it, because he ruffled their damp hair, and observed in a tone too playful to put Hank on guard, “My two kids are telepaths, aren’t they?” 

Hank had sensed Pavel’s confusion before his forehead furrowed and he pointed out in his stilted English, “We not televisions, Brett. Don’t get turned on and off all day.” 

“Telepaths, not televisions, Pav.” Brett’s ribcage rumbled a guffaw at Pavel’s botched translation. “Telepaths are mind-readers, and televisions are talking boxes.” 

“We can only read each other’s minds.” Hank couldn’t bring himself to lie to Brett even if it meant they lost a line mate who would probably stalk off, shouting that the two of them belonged in a padded room of a mental hospital where they couldn’t hurt themselves or others. 

“That’s how it was for Adam Oates and me.” Brett’s words were pronounced casually but that didn’t stop Hank from almost going into cardiac arrest, and he could feel the lightning bolt of Pavel’s shock jolting through him. As though oblivious to their surprise, Brett gave each of their shoulders hearty slaps while he continued, “Treasure your connection, kids. Don’t let anyone break it.” 

When they had sailed out of this memory, Pavel said, ‘We’ll stick together, and we’ll make the playoffs. I have faith because faith is you.’ 

‘And you.’ Hank’s lips quirked into a smile. 

‘And the memory of being together.’ Pavel’s forehead pushed more forcefully against Hank’s as if to make them one. ‘We’ll be together no matter what happens. That’s our faith and our promise.’


End file.
